This Week's Postcards and Purchases

I am starting university and work on Tuesday! I am so stressed out that swapping seems like an obscene thing to think about. Of course, one thing that doesn't seem like a guilty activity is buying something nice for oneself :)) But first of all, the postcards. Only two of them came in this week.

A thank you- card from Malaysia (via Swap-bot)

The kind swapper who sent it said men with pet monkeys were typical in Malaysian villages, helping the locals pick coconuts. He also said it wasn't a common sight anymore. A very interesting cultural detail!

From U.S.A. via Swap-bot
(P. S. Write Back #33)

This swapper's postcard that I was supposed to send back to her got lost somewhere along the way and I never received it. She didn't want to risk losing another treasured postcard again, so we arranged to simply exchange naked and stamped postcards.

I also managed to almost finish two letters, wrote a couple of postcards and prepared a tiny package. I still need to take photos of those, before I mail them out.

And now, the things I spoilt myself with this week. They have very little to do with swapping, but they made me almost as happy as swapping does, so why not show them here ;)

I am very glad to finally have been able to obtain some variety of postal stamps. It appears that there's only one place where they sell philatelic stamps in Madrid, and it made me think it was probably because there was little interest in buying them among the madrileños. Rather, there is little interest in distributing the stamps by the authorities, because the queue at the post office seemed never-ending. However, I was patient and lucky and I got to buy the coolest Spanish stamps ever, with the electric postal van on them. The van really exists, I saw the cutie circulating the university campus a couple of times. These are my spoils of war of the day:

Aaaaand, although it's little relevant, I discovered a Russian supermarket here in the capital. I had been given the advice by several people that I should look for Lithuanian products there. When I went back home to my country this summer, I hardly ate any typical local food, but having a very curious boyfriend, I decided to give it a shot and introduce him to the Eastern-European foodstuffs. We had a blast. There were so many kitschy souvenirs and different kinds of pickled vegetables, I ran around yelling "this is what I grew up on" and "this is made from pig intestines, preservatives, toilet paper and magic, yay!", and we just kept filling the shopping basket. They had items from all over Eastern Europe, and many of them were from my home country, so the gastronomic experience was more than successful. That's what we got in the end*:

1- Kissel. A very typical starchy fruit desert. The cranberry version of it is a must on the Christmas Eve table in my country.

2- Big marshmallows, called zefyrai in Lithuanian. I actually hate them, but when I was little they were only served on birthdays, as a real delicacy. Still, it doesn't explain why I bought them.

3- Very light Russian beer that didn't survive the ride home :D

4- Kvass a.k.a. "the Soviet Coca-Cola". It is a sparkling soft drink made of fermented bread. It's like the beer's little brother :) During the Soviet era it was sold directly from tank cars on the streets. I still remember something like this from my childhood.

5- Kefir. It's basically sour milk, fermented with lactic acid bacteria. Tastes pretty much like liquid yoghurt.

6- Sautéed carrot garnish. That's all I can say about it by now, since we haven't tried it yet. If it's what I think my grandmother used to make, it should be quite yummy.

7- HORSERADISH sauce!!! How could I live without it? It's normally eaten with meat dishes in order to give them some spiciness, but I can finish the jar in one go, alone.

8- Sour cream. It's mainly considered to be a complete sauce rather than an ingredient where I come from, eaten with dumplings, pancakes etc. where I come from. I personally think it's edible embolism and try to avoid it whenever possible, but each cuisine has its dark side, and the boyfriend needed to make an informed decision about loving/hating this one. 

9- Doktorskaya sausage. It is a Soviet legend, a heavily processed/ground pink Bologna sausage whose fabrication process is also a legend of its own. It was said to contain pig brains and toilet paper, but in reality it's just a meat product that contains a lot of lard (although not visible) and preservatives, nothing that wouldn't actually be edible. As with any kind of sausage, it's better not to see how it's made. It tastes pretty good, I must admit.

10- Dumplings with meat filling, an international classic. Heavy, tasty, simple. We loved them (with a drop of sour cream, he he).

11- Canned bristling in olive oil. I sometimes miss it on a white bread, egg and mayonnaise sandwich.

* The coffee machine and the microwave weren't included. I just felt uninspired and didn't bother to find an artsy setting for the very unsophisticated food items.

I wonder if any of my readers has grown up on similar food or buy some of it now on regular basis... For me it's basically an expat survival kit, I would rarely buy any of that stuff if I were at home, although I'm eating it with pleasure now.

Time to go to bed, but I just started craving that Hello Kitty sausage.